Schumer: 'The System Is Rigged!'

Pushes Leftism With Political Homeboy Stephanopoulos

"The system is rigged against ['working people'],” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) in a Sunday-aired interview with news media ally George Stephanopoulos for ABC’s This Week.

Schumer pushed for increasing centralized state-driven economic planning: increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, a federal government takeover of “child care,” and promises to “go after drug companies.”

Invited to push for a communist health care system by Stephanopoulos with the euphemism “single-payer health care,” Schumer refused to offer a direct answer.

Schumer attempted to co-opt President Donald Trump’s platform, alleging that Trump’s presidential campaign was of a Democrat flavor:

Donald Trump campaigned sort of on this message. He was a populist. He campaigned against the establishment. As soon as he got into office, he embraced the Koch brother hard right and abandoned his plans to clean up Wall Street, to drain the swamp, to be tough on trade. We are going fill that gap in a way that's really going to resonate with the American people.

Democrats were insufficiently left-wing, said Schumer, promising to move further left over time:

Week after week, month after month, we're going to roll out specific pieces here, that are quite different than the Democratic Party you heard in the past. We were too cautious. We were too namby-pamby.

The left-right political paradigm was now obsolete, said Schumer, framing it as an archaic social fault line:

[The Democrats' agenda] is not going to be left or right. It is going to be totally focused on working people who realize, believe correctly, that the system is rigged against them, and not helping them with all the changes. Rapid changes, economic and social. And people ask, well, are you going appeal to the Obama coalition? You know, young people, LGBT, people of color? Or the Trump people — Democrats who voted for Trump, blue collar voters? This will appeal to both.

At no point did Schumer propose any reductions in state power.

Stephanopoulos did not ask Schumer to provide any specifics or details regarding his nebulous left-wing economic proposals.

Stephanopoulos presents himself as an objective and non-partisan news media personality. ABC similarly presents itself as an objective and non-partisan news media outlet.